“America needs a leader who understands the incredible opportunity that our energy resources can provide us — to create good-paying jobs, generate desperately needed revenues to pay down our suffocating debt, and facilitate broad-based economic growth,” Pickens wrote. “The question is not whether we have the tools to succeed, but whether we will have a leader who knows how to use them. My vote goes to Mitt Romney, because I believe that he is just such a leader.”

Boone Pickens thinks a second Obama term is a gamble Americans shouldn't take. (Getty Image)

There’s good political reason why Pickens’ endorsement appeared in a newspaper in Pittsburgh, Pa., and not Pittsburg, Texas. Trailing in Ohio and Wisconsin, the Romney campaign is making a late push to take Pennsylvania out of the Obama column.

Obama has consistently led in Pennsylvania polling, though the margin has diminished in recent weeks. Republicans think that energy-production is an issue that could attract some western Pennsylvania workers, who have been told that fracking could create jobs in southeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

Pickens, in his op-ed piece, says the incumbent is not prepared for the energy challenges ahead.

“President Obama frequently claims credit for an energy revolution taking place thanks to technological advancements born in the private sector,” Pickens wrote. “I say it has happened in spite of him and his policies. In fact, his administration has systematically launched a regulatory war on oil, gas and coal. In the first three years of the Obama presidency, 42 percent fewer leases on public lands were approved than during the last three years of President of President George W. Bush’s administration. Almost all of the increases in oil and gas production have occurred on state and private lands, where the President has had little ability to interfere. But given another term, all bets are off.”

On the other hand, said Pickens, Romney “has put forward a far more rational set of proposals to jump start our economy, beginning with genuine support for the responsible development of our abundant energy resources.”